Josh Nunn’s Geekorium \ tag \ google

Not really.

Google released a small update yesterday that adds information about recent activity on your Gmail account to the bottom of the Gmail interface.

The new option in the Gmail interface

It also includes a link to further information, including details of IP addresses and methods that have recently been used to access your account. If anyone has accessed your mail in any way, it will be reported here.

Argh! What is that?!

I checked mine the minute it showed up in my inbox, and was shocked to see a bunch of IP addresses listed, when I hadn’t been anywhere near my computer in the last five hours.

» Continue reading Someone hacked my Gmail!

Google has been running a “treasurehunt” with unspecified prizes up for grabs for the fastest times to complete the tasks. What it amounts to is four questions spaced over a month, that you can log onto in your own time and attempt to nut out. The questions are randomly generated, but are of a different type each week. The first week was a number/maths problem, the second was a computer/file problem, the third a logic (and slightly computer network) problem. I haven’t seen the final fourth question yet.

I thought I’d jot down how I answered the questions - not my particular answers - as they will be different for other people, but the methods for answering the questions which are the same for each of the four question types.

Please note that I cannot finish the treasure hunt. I got stuck at question four. I wrote up how I did questions one to three before I’d done four and it just seemed like a waste not to post them.

» Continue reading Starting the Google Treasure Hunt: How to do the first three questions

google_logo, originally uploaded by keso.

OK, I haven’t Googled it so this game might already exist.

Two or more players - one player does a bit of research (if they need to) and declares some piece of information that the other players must find. Ideally it should be something that will only be found on one page on the net - not common info like you might find on Wikipedia, but rather some small factoid on some obscure website in the outer reaches of the internet.

Then the other players have to craft the perfect search phrase that will produce that page in the top result of a Google search - without using any of the actual words you’re searching for, or any prior knowledge of the page to your advantage. The player’s score decreases with every failed attempt to make it into the top spot.

I can’t think of anyone geeky enough to actually play this with me, so it’s purely hypothetical. And it’d probably need honing and crafting to make it playable. If you’re geeky enough you might also like Googlewhacking or you could check out this online archive of Google games.

Actually, it’s more of a love/frustration relationship. It’s so one-sided.

I’m a big fan of Google. About 3 years ago I realised that working between home and two schools, I’d have a lot of information that I’d need to share around easily. Web 2.0 had just hit its stride and instead of stowing everything I created, wrote or needed on a USB stick, I thought I’d see how much I could get online.

Google at the time was expanding rapidly, and had just added a calendar to its already successful online mail app. A little while later it acquired Writely - which luck would have it I already had an account at. All in all, Google was looking set to be able to take my data online and keep it all together in one big web-app.
» Continue reading My Love/Hate relationship with Google

Heh.